


Seeing Bruce Wayne

by Evilpixie



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU, Superman - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Medical, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Childbirth, Gender or Sex Swap, M/M, Mild Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-09
Updated: 2014-11-09
Packaged: 2018-02-24 17:31:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2590136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Evilpixie/pseuds/Evilpixie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clark Kent is the only male midwife working in Metropolis General. Bruce Wayne the residential paediatric surgeon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seeing Bruce Wayne

**Author's Note:**

> Just a quick disclaimer: this story does involve depictions of childbirth and some slightly heavier themes. Please read at your own discretion.

Clark hated seeing Bruce Wayne.

 

Seeing Bruce Wayne meant something had gone wrong.

 

The first time he had lain eyes the other man had been on his first night working in the maternity building of Metropolis General. He had still been in his final year of study as a midwife, had finally got a placement for on the job training, and was assigned to follow and assist Lois Lane as she worked. The birth had been going well; the prospective parents exchanging breathless banter between contractions, clasping hands, and looking to Lois as she gave instructions from between the woman’s knees. Then nothing. The labour failed to progress, the baby’s heart rate plummeted, and suddenly Clark was being shouldered back by hospital staff and senior midwives as the would-be-mother was prepped and raced down the hall towards the emergency operating theatre.

 

He would have stayed outside in the hall if Lois hadn’t turned to him, grabbed his hand, and told him the first rule of midwifery. Something he had never heard in the classroom playing with dolls and pelvic bones or picked up observing at the birth centres.

 

“Never leave them alone with the doctors, Clark.”

 

“But…”

 

“ _Never_. The doctors may be able to handle the nuts and bolts but believe me; they don’t know how to handle the people.” Her eyes were fierce as she spoke; posture drawn and powerful. “You’re the midwife. You’re the one that has been on this journey with them; in the trenches beside them through this labour. They need you in there with them for the good _and_ the bad. That’s your job. Not just birthing babies but being there through _everything_. Understand?”

 

“Y-yeah.”

 

"Good."

 

He hadn’t. Not really. But he obediently followed her into scrub, entered the suite, and stood by the scales for the impromptu procedure. Throughout the entire thing Lois stayed in the pale faced parents’ line of sight and kept dialogue open; telling them what was going on and what it meant as the doctors grunted to each other in a mix of medical jargon and over simplified cheery comments that fell flat on the terrified couple’s ears. Or, at least, one of the doctors did. The younger of the two, the hospital’s new star surgeon plucked from Gotham Specialised Care, never uttered a word of comfort false or otherwise. Instead he shouldered aside the other man, performed a precision perfect c-section, and removed the baby faster than Clark even thought possible. He wasn’t, however, interested in the wailing baby so much as the knot in the umbilical cord; the answer to the medical mystery and reason as to why the labour failed.

 

Clark leapt forward and took the baby as it was passed off; weighed it, cleaned it, and wrapped it to pass onto the parents. In amongst this Lois managed to get the father to cut the cord, fixed an ID tag onto its wrist, and pulled a cap down over the bare skin over its skull.

 

“You have a boy,” he told the new parents; the first birth he had ever announced; voice shaking with relief. “At three fifteen pm.”

 

“On the dot;” Lois said with casual confidence – betraying none of the urgency she had in the corridor – as the doctors put the new mother back together. “That’s the time kids get out of school. This kid is born lucky. What’s his name?”

 

“Victor Stone,” the man said proudly.

 

“Vic,” the woman specified, holding her bundled child to her chest and smiling as he blinked up at her. “Little Vic.”

 

Out the corner of his eye he saw Bruce Wayne peel off bloodied gloves and walk out of the room without a backward glance.

 

That was the moment he started to understand. Doctors were heroes; they saved lives, solved mysteries, and defeated death day after day. A midwife was something different. They weren’t as academically skilled, well equipped, or renowned, but they were there; a pillar of support; an experienced friendly hand, and at the most extreme a beckon of hope. Hope, he thought as he looked at the tiny boy wriggling in his mothers arms, seemed like a good thing to stand for.

 

Lois stopped him afterwards out in the corridor.

 

“Oh boy, Smallville, that was not the straight forward first birth I had planned for you to help out with. A knot in the cord? I have never seen that before. Creases and folds, yes, but never a knot.” She shook her head. “That little guy must have been running on fumes in there. I would not blame you if, after that, you want to throw in the midwifery towel.”

 

“No! I actually think…” he paused, collected his thoughts, and continued. “I’m not quitting just because of one emergency caesarean. I want to do this.”

 

“Do you?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Good.” The woman crossed her arms and cocked an eyebrow. “Because, for starters, you have a thing or two to learn about how to wrap up a baby.”

 

It was the first time he saw Bruce Wayne but it wasn’t the last. Over the next few months Clark saw the doctor whenever something went wrong with one of the births like a post-disaster black cat. The man worked on residence and was the primary operator that performed any kind of high risk c-section or prenatal surgery. His specialty, however, was paediatric surgery on infants; and he was good at it. It wasn’t uncommon for newborns from other hospitals around the state to arrive by air ambulance and be rushed into the emergency suite. The hospital, he was told, was lucky to have him.

 

He still hated seeing him.

 

 

\---

 

 

“Okay! Listen up!” Stevie Lombard was a heavily built woman with a matronly bob, small stern earrings, and abnormally hairy arms. Despite not being the most senior midwife she was the oldest and liked the imagined authority that title gave her. “I got a lady coming in who I promised a water birth so I bags room four,” she picked up a marker and scribbled the surname across the massive care board mounted on the wall. “I’ll leave the rest of you lot to fight over the others. Room four is mine.”

 

“Bullshit it is,” Lois said as she walked in, hair bundled on top of her head, and cheeks flushed. She scowled at the name written on the care board stepped forward to rub it off with the heel of her palm. “ _She_ isn’t even in labour yet.”

 

“She phoned. It’s her due date.”

 

Lois rolled her eyes. “And we all know babies are always born _exactly_ on their due date.” She snatched the marker and wrote _Stevie_ beside room two and jotted down a different surname in the appropriate collum. “ _She_ doesn’t have a midwife, is sitting in the overnights, and her water just broke.”

 

“That’s the woman who threw her dinner at her husband, right? Geez, Lane, you’re a hard arse.”

 

“I’ve caught you napping in room four twice, Stevie. Perry would kill you if he found out.”

 

“Well, Perry can eat my p—”

 

“Oh my gosh, oh my gosh,” Jenny dashed in the room. “Lois, I can’t find any full masks for the gas and air! My lady—” a scream echoed down the corridor. “—really needs some pain relief, like, right now.”

 

“If not sooner,” Lois agreed with a quirk of lip.

 

Jenny Olsen was a gangly girl with bright orange hair cropped short like a boys and face covered in freckles. She had also got in trouble last week for coming to work wearing a go-pro.

 

Another scream.

 

“Sounds like that one might be a bit past gas and air,” Cat commented as she sipped her coffee.

 

Jenny looked torn. “I know. But her birth plan says no epidural.”

 

Clark, Lois, and Cat fell quiet as the scream came a third time. “Ask if she wants to reconsider,” Lois suggested. “I’ll send a call down for Ron to get one ready just in case. Oh, and there are spare masks under the sink the second storage room. See if it helps.”

 

Jenny dashed off and Lois turned to regard him and Cat with a critical eye. “Do I have to worry about either of you sneaking off to sleep in room four?”

 

“Hey,” Clark threw up his hands. “If the phone starts ringing or someone comes in then I’ll jump right up.”

 

“My lady is doing the whole hypnobirth thing,” Cat defended herself. “I’m giving them some room to, I don’t know, sit in a circle and hum? I don’t get these hypnobirthers, but she’s actually doing pretty well. Wait.” She turned to Clark. “If someone comes in? You got qualified! Oh, why didn’t you tell me? Have you done your first delivery as a bona fide midwife yet?”

 

“No.”

 

“He’s been qualified for two days,” Lois said, hands on hips.

 

In shock. “And you still haven’t delivered a baby in that time?” Cat asked.

 

“Well,” he tugged at the plain blue of his uniform. “I wasn’t on yesterday and it’s been a slow night tonight. Everyone’s been requesting female midwives I suppose. It’s no big deal.” It was torture. “Pretty soon we’ll get a busy night and they’ll have to take me. I’ll just take care of the calls and paperwork.”

 

“That’s ridiculous,” Cat said, shaking her head and leaning back against the staff kitchen counter. “I would much rather you between my legs than Stevie.”

 

Lois snorted as she updated the care board. “Real classy Cat.”

 

“I’m just sayin’.”

 

“Kent!” The voice echoed down the hallway. “Where the hell are you?!”

 

“Coming Mr. White!” He scrambled to his feet as the women exchanged a layered look and raced out into the nurse’s station just as the burly man arrived at the counter.

 

“Why do I pay you when I should have you arrested for loitering?”

 

“Sorry, Mr White.”

 

“The coffee you got me was ter—”

 

A voice from the phone. _“Need a midwife on line one.”_

 

“Just a second, Mr. White,” he picked up the receiver grateful for the distraction. “Hello. Midwife speaking.”

 

A startled voice on the other end. _“A midwife? But you’re a man.”_

 

“Yes, is everything alright?”

 

_“I… I think my waters broke in the bath but it’s green.”_

 

“Yes, I’m going to need you to come in right away Ms…?”

 

She answered and he jotted the name down on the form by the phone.

 

_“B-but I haven’t had any contractions. What does that mean?”_

“It’s nothing to worry about. Your baby’s is fine.” He gave a quick explanation as to exactly what had happened; again reassured her it was alright, and linked the call back to the reception.

 

Perry stood over him looking decidedly less flushed than he had a moment ago.

 

“I could get another coffee if…”

 

“Don’t bother, Kent.” He shook his head. “I’ve been general managing a maternity unit for twenty years now and I still don’t know where babies come from. What was that? Mecon…?”

 

“Meconium.”

 

“Yeah, that. Mention it again and you’re fired.”

 

He frowned. “I don’t think I can do that, Mr. White.”

 

A gloomy look. “I was afraid you’d say that.”

 

Jenny raced down the hall again and seized a confused looking Ron as he emerged from the elevator wheeling a small cart along beside him with a prepped needle resting among a host of other implements. He was a wiry man with broad rimmed glasses and looked to have ironed his scrubs.

 

“You’re my epidural?”

 

“I think…”

 

“What are you two standing around for?” Lois burst out of the staff room. “Mother gave the go ahead? Go jab her in the spine. Poor lady is screaming in there.” She disappeared after the red headed midwife and the antheatist.

 

The moment she was out of sight the phone lit up again. _“I’ve got a lady giving birth in the car park.”_

 

A moment of silence.

 

“Lois?” Clark called uncertainly.

 

No answer.

 

_“I wasn’t kidding, ladies. Need all available midwives out here stat.”_

 

Cat emerged from the staff room with a chuckle. “Don’t look at me, Clark. I’m hypnobirthing.” A slow sip of her coffee.

 

Clark stared at her for a moment longer, leapt blindly to his feet, and pushed Perry aside as he raced through the ward. He burst into reception with two other midwives that evaporated out of thin air, flicked the switch to open the massive double doors, and raced out into the parking lot. They hadn’t been lying. A woman leant against the front of a car moaning as a frantic husband stood nearby holding an overnight bag Clark was starting to doubt he would need.

 

“Hey, how are you feeling? Do you need to pu—”

 

“Y—ah!”

 

One of the other midwives produced a wheelchair and moved to guide her down.

 

“I—ah! Wait! I think the head is—ah!”

 

Clark felt between her legs. Oh yeah. That was head out. Not just a little bit of head out either.

 

He fell to his knees behind her, pulled down the woman’s baggy sweatpants, and came face to face with a red skinned baby protruding from between her thighs.

 

The husband. “Oh my God, Mary, his head’s out. I can’t believe—”

 

And then the rest of him came. Clark caught him, wiped some blood from his face on the sleeve of his shirt, and smiled up at the bewildered father and exhausted mother still leaning half naked against the car; umbilical cord swinging between her knees.

 

“Time of birth,” one of the other midwives said. “Six fi—wait, no, eh, one minute past seven pm.”

 

“Can I get some blankets out here?” Clark asked. “And, Mary is it? Can you hold him?”

 

“Yeah,” she tried to turn, thighs catching on the cord. “I…”

 

“I’m going to pass him up between your legs. Maybe your partner could… yes, thank you. There you go. Skin on skin. Yes. Is this your first? Do you have a name picked out?”

 

“Wally,” the woman said breathlessly as she cradled the bundle buried bloody under her shirt. “I… gosh… my waters only broke an hour ago.”

 

“He’s fast,” the father said proudly with a laugh. “That’s my boy! No messin’ around, ay? Second he had a pair of arms to catch him out he pops.”

 

“Nice night for it.”

 

Clark looked up and his stomach leapt into his mouth. Bruce Wayne stood by a low slung Mercedes Benz, work shirt falling off him in neat folds, and collarbone visible where he’d neglected to wear a tie. In the night his impossibly icy blue eyes looked almost predatory. Terrifying.

 

A small amused smile at the couple and Clark still kneeling on the ground. “I’m Wayne. Paediatric surgeon.”

 

“I know.” A pause. “I… I’m Cl—Kent. I’m Kent.”

 

“You’re a new obstetrician?”

 

“No.”

 

A questioning eyebrow.

 

It was a silly reaction. Irrational. Stupid.

 

“I’m a new midwife.”

 

But he hated seeing Bruce Wayne.

 

 

\--

 

 

“Okay, that’s it! Good. Alright, on your next contraction I want you to _really_ push. Bottle that breath and push it right down into your bottom like you're really constipated. Chin down. That’s it. Are you ready?”

 

“I can’t do it I…”

 

“Yes you can you’re doing brilliantly. Just one more big push and then I’m going to ask you to breathe. Have you been practising your breathing? Yes. Like that. Perfect. You’re a natural at this. Okay, Angela, here it comes, one _big_ push.”

 

The woman sucked in a deep breath of air, thrust her chin down against her collarbone, and pushed; cheeks red, legs up, and sides straining.

 

“Yes, good girl, keep pushing keep pushing keep pushing keep pushing… that’s it! I can see the top of your baby’s head now. Got a lot of hair.”

 

He wasn’t usually this vocal during a birth but the room wasn’t usually this empty either. There were plenty of women who, for whatever reason, didn’t have a man at their side but they always had a birth partner of some kind; their mother, a friend, or sometimes a close sibling. Angela Roth had walked into the delivery suite carrying her own backpack, holding her bump, and shyly asked if he could help her brush her hair into a bun so it wouldn’t get messy.

 

She was a beautiful woman; angelic with pale skin, delicate features, and a cloud of feathery light hair. He silently hoped the baby looked like her when it arrived and not the absentee father she had told reception to let through if he arrived.

 

“Owww! No, I can’t do it. I can’t,” she sobbed.

 

“But you are, Angela,” he prompted gently. “You’re doing it and you’re doing so well.”

 

“Where’s Triston? Did he come?”

 

“No. I’m sorry.”

 

She wiped her eyes on the back of her hand. “I thought he would.” Didn’t say another word.

 

The greatest thing about being a midwife, Clark decided after his first unconventional delivery in the car park, was sharing these moments with people’s lives. Being a part of, a witness to, women becoming mothers and men becoming fathers be it for the first time or again. It was a beautiful moment that came in a lot of different flavours and allowed him to steal a quick glance at the impossible journeys that led them into his care.

 

Sometimes those stories were funny, quirky and strange. Sometimes they were downright odd. Sometimes beautiful and romantic. Sometimes just beautiful. But, he learnt with Angela, they could also be simple and heartbreaking.

 

“That’s it Angela,” he kept filling up the empty air of the room. “I swear, you’re doing fine. Keep pushing. Good, that’s it, good! Oh, amazing! Just a little bit more to go now. Just little pushes while I get Baby’s nose out. There. That’s a lot of hair. Dark just like yours.”

 

“Ah!” her voice was high pitched and broken. “Please I… I need some different pain relief.”

 

“I’m sorry; it’s a little late for that. Just keep doing what you’re doing. Little pushes. Yes, that’s it! Here she comes!”

 

He gathered the wriggling creature up placed her on the panting woman’s chest.

 

“It’s a girl,” Angela panted; eyes wide and teary. “Oh God, it’s a girl… I… I can’t believe I did that. I can’t believe it. I… it’s a girl.” She hugged her and cried into her hair. “God, she’s beautiful. So b-beautiful. I can’t believe I did that. I can’t believe it. So beautiful. Thank you. Thank you so much.”

 

For the first time that night he didn’t know what to say.

 

 

\--

 

 

“Happy Birthday!”

 

“Go on,” Cat pushed. “Make a wish, Clark.”

 

“Wish for a pay raise,” Stevie suggested.

 

“Fat chance!” Perry yelled from the other room.

 

“Oh man, that looks good.” Jenny moaned miserably. “I’m meant to be on a diet.”

 

Stevie. “Nonsense. You’re a midwife. You’ve got to have a big bum.”

 

Cat. “She’s right, Jenny. It’s part of the job description.”

 

“Will you lot shut up,” Lois snapped. “This is Clark’s cake and he’ll do whatever he wants with it.” A pointed look. “As long as that includes giving me a slice.”

 

“I don’t know, Lois.” He grinned coyly up at her. “It looks _awful_ nice.”

 

“Yeah, I know it looks awful nice,” she mimicked his Midwestern accent and crossed her arms over his breast. “I baked it.”

 

“Really? Because I swear I saw a Sal’s Bakery…”

 

“What are you? An investigative reporter now? Blow out your damn candles and give me some cake.”

 

He happily obeyed.

 

It was a dense devilish mud cake; rich enough to fill his stomach in moment, yet nice enough to keep eating until his belly ached. As he ate he listened to the other midwives chat happily among themselves about all the babies that would be sharing a birthday with him. Cat was due to prep a woman for voluntary caesarean, Jenny was jittery with nervous excitement at the prospect of delivering twins, and Stevie was already rocking a baby in her arms; the parents exhausted after an all night labour.

 

He was looking after a teen mother who had brought in an army of sisters who all had done different research and had different ideas as to how this labour should go but none of which had ever given birth.

 

“You should have requested a water birth. It’s so much better for the baby. I read this thing…”

 

“Want a natural birth as much as possible. I think…”

 

“That’s ridiculous! There is pain and there is pain relief; that isn’t an intelligence test anyone should fail let…”

 

“The pain of childbirth is part of being a woman.”

 

“And I suppose none of us are complete woman then. Are men only men once they’ve sat on their balls?”

 

“Why is the midwife a man? Isn’t this woman’s work?”

 

“Don’t be silly!”

 

“I still think water birth would be…”

 

“You won’t be able to have sex. That’s for sure.”

 

“Oh?” One of them noticed a sicker Jenny had slapped onto his sleeve. “Is it your birthday?”

 

“Yes,” he replied, grateful for an opening. “Let’s see if it’s someone else’s too.”

 

It wasn’t.

 

The soon to be new mother – Dorothy – marched steadily through a slow progressing labour as her sisters who he was starting to suspect weren’t biologically related at all rotated through a roster to sit two at a time at her bedside.

 

“Okay, you’re doing brilliantly, but you’ve still got a bit of cervix there so we need to hold back from pushing for a little while longer. Then it shouldn’t be long till Baby’s here.”

 

“It’s almost midnight,” the girl moaned. “Can’t you just pull her out?”

 

A fond smile. “Trust me; you don’t want me to do that.”

 

The girl was born fourteen minutes past twelve, weight just over eight pounds, and was an instant hit with the two sisters lucky enough to be in the room during the birth.

 

A couple of hours later he sat in the staffroom under the care board proudly declaring DEL beneath the status collum and cradled the newborn baby girl. The sisters had all taken photos of and with her before leaving Dorothy alone to sleep in a recovery room Clark booked. Despite being so young the girl had insisted no one stay to watch her sleep and allowed Clark to carry off her newborn for a quick cuddle.

 

It was the guilty pleasure of midwives everywhere.

 

“Is that the Hinckley baby?”

 

He looked up with a smile that turned stiff when he saw the man standing in the doorway.

 

“Yeah,” he forced himself to say. “Real sweet isn’t she. They’re going to call her Don—”

 

“Is Ms Hinckley able to talk?” Bruce interrupted him; eyes reserved and businesslike.

 

Clark’s smiled flickered. “What about?” Then more aggressively than he would have liked. “You don’t need to be here. Nothing went wrong. Look, the baby’s fine.”

 

“I got a call from oncology,” the doctor informed him. “They want to talk to her about the possibility of starting her treatment early now that she’s finished her pregnancy or if she would rather not go ahead with that treatment plan.”

 

Clark stared at him in horror. “She… no. No, let her rest for a while.” A quick lie. “She was wrecked after her labour.”

 

Bruce nodded and left.

 

It was normal for parents to cry after their baby was born. Clark even preferred it. It seemed the simplest, sweetest, reaction after something as hard as giving birth. He didn’t notice at the time of Donna’s birth that there was something not quite right about the way Dorothy Hinckley cried as she held her baby. Something wretched and off balance. He didn’t realise something was wrong until Bruce Wayne stepped back into the maternity ward and told him.

 

“Happy Birthday,” he told the girl using her newly working lungs to blow bubbles at him. “Happy Birthday.”

 

 

\--

 

 

“Why do you hate me, Kent?”

 

He looked up in surprise and almost dropped his keys when he saw the man standing alone in the car park just as the first rays of sun started to spear the horizon.

 

“I don’t hate you, Dr. Wayne.”

 

“Yes you do. I don’t think I’ve ever met a person who hated me more. I just don’t know why.”

 

The silence that followed that statement was heavy and squarely on his shoulders; a simple, astute, observation that he now had to refute, disprove, and counterbalance.

 

“I don’t hate you,” he said lamely. “I just… um…”

 

“You’re everyone’s best friend,” Bruce continued stacking points against him. “Even White likes you.” A pause. “Did you want to be a paediatrician?”

 

Clark blinked at him in shock. “What? No!”

 

“Another doctor of some kind?”

 

“No! Christ, I’m not jealous of you. Believe it or not I never wanted to be a doctor.”

 

Bruce didn’t respond; his silence somehow seething with scepticism.

 

“I didn’t,” he told him, voice harsher than intended. “It was never about driving nice cars or being praised when you figure out what went wrong for me.”

 

The man’s lips thinned. “You’re telling me you would rather mop up afterbirth for a living?”

 

He stared at him in disbelief, turned away, and thrust his keys into his car lock. “Fuck you.”

 

 

\--

 

 

Mera Curry sat on the edge of the tub in a glittering green bikini top, her red hair bundled onto the very top of her head, and face drawn and pale. Looking for all the world like a supermodel despite her slightly uneven bulge and tight, nervous, look.

 

“What if something goes wrong? His shoulder gets stuck? What if he’s changed position from yesterday? Will I have to come out of the water?”

 

“I’ll ask you to come out if you’re having too much difficulty,” Clark told her earnestly. “You can stay in the bed if you would rather.”

 

“No,” she shook her head. “No. Have you read my birth plan? Page one I said I wanted a water birth. My doctor told me it would be better.”

 

“Yeah, well, doctor’s don’t know everything.”

 

A targeted look.

 

“I, ahem,” he cleared his throat. “I mean, every labour is different and however you feel comfortable is best for you and your baby. I’ll be able to work around you. Don’t worry.”

 

Low. “Don’t tell me not to worry.”

 

Contrary to what one might expect first time mothers were usually not the most frightened women to walk into the ward. Far worse were the women that had given birth before and had a bad experience. He had read Mera’s birth plan and more besides and knew her previous birth hadn’t gone to plan and the baby had died of cot death only a few months afterwards. That was a hell of a lot of baggage to bring into a birth suite and he didn’t blame her for being scared. Lois had chosen him for the job because, according to her, he got along with everyone.

 

He hadn’t told her – or anyone – about meeting Bruce Wayne in the car park.

 

“Can you pass me my phone?”

 

“Sure,” Clark gave her the object in question.

 

“Is it okay to use in here?”

 

“Yes. One of the benefits of having our own building.”

 

She sent him a layered look and tapped on the touch screen. Brought the phone up to her ear. “Yes, it’s me where are you? … I don’t give a damn. The company can survive without you for one day. Get your arse down here now or I’ll name him after your brother… Damn it Arthur, Metropolis General like I told you. The maternity building is… yes, that’s the one. Good; you remembered that much anyway. Look, just get here in the next hour, okay?” She hung up. Looked at him.

 

“I’m sure he’ll be…”

 

“I don’t need you to comfort me.”

 

“I’m sorry.” He checked the thermometer one more time and turned off the taps. “The water’s the right temperature. You can jump in whenever you’re ready.”

 

“Good.”

 

Mera he quickly learnt on top of being frightened, or perhaps because of, had a temper. Her husband, when he arrived in a dark green suit with a golden tie, wasn’t much better. His long blonde hair was knotted at the back of his head, a stern beard covered the bottom half of his face, and his hand was a practical looking prosthetic. He didn’t like Clark but he was the first father Clark had ever met who wasn’t squeamish about stripping off and getting into the bath to comfort his wife.

 

He retreated out into the staff room to catch a breather and update the care board.

 

“How’s it coming?”

 

“Four centimetres,” he answered.

 

“I mean with those two,” Lois said from where she sat filling out forms. “Scared parents are the hardest birthers.”

 

“Yeah, I know.”

 

“And they’re rich.”

 

He turned to face her. “What does being rich have to do with it?”

 

“Oh,” the woman smiled up at him. “Nothing. But Dr. Wayne seemed to think you might not like rich people.”

 

He froze. Felt the blush creep up his cheeks. “Dr. Wayne said what?”

 

“Something about you not liking his car. But, honestly, that’s about it. This is not a good place to work if you don’t like rich people. Rich kids tend to like to fly to the maternity unit with the renowned baby surgeon living in the basement. Makes them feel safe, or important, or both.”

 

“Was he… angry?”

 

She snorted. “It’s Bruce Wayne. I’ve met newborns with more variety of expression than him. Honestly, Smallville, I don’t have a clue.” She frowned. “Did you two fight or something?”

 

“No,” he lied, quickly finished filling out the care board, and left the room with a tight lipped smile.

 

Later that day he pulled a ten pound baby out of the bathtub and handed him kicking and screaming to Mera. He looked a lot like his father and was given the same name too. The newly titled Arthur Curry Senior pulled his new family into his arms with a booming laugh.

 

“Thank you,” the woman said as she sat in the water in the embrace of her husband and breathed in the scent of her baby. “I’m so sorry. I was the worst. I’m sorry. Thank you.”

 

A low laugh. “Trust me, Mera. You’re far from the worst.”

 

 

\--

 

 

Clark walked into the staffroom, exhausted, as a pitching scream filled the air; flying up impossible octaves and making all babies in the ward wail miserably in response.

 

“Geez,” Cat made a face. “Who’s that?”

 

“Someone practising for _American Idol_?” Stevie suggested with a laugh.

 

“Mine,” Clark answered and rubbed his brow as another scream rang out. “Why do the hard ones always come at the end of shift?”

 

Cat made a sympathetic face and hugged him in a way that brushed her breasts deliberately against his arm. Once he managed to untangle himself he updated the care board, stole Stevie’s coffee, and downed the whole thing in one swig.

 

“Hey!”

 

He delivered the empty mug back onto the table and ran out; ducking the empty donut box that flew at his head. A woman with a baby watched the display in shock as Lois tried to lead her out; sending him a dark look as he passed and jogged back towards his room just as a third piercing screech filled the air.

 

“Ahhhhhhhhhheeeeeeeeeeaaaaahhhh! Ohhhhh mama!”

 

“Harleen?” He knocked and re-entered the room to find the blonde bouncing furiously on the exercise ball; high pig tails flailing around her face and lacy red dress hiked up above her thighs. It looked worryingly like lingerie and the frilly cups pushed her breasts up into a terrifying pucker.

 

Through puffs of the gas and air. “Come out, baby! Come out! Come out!”

 

“Harleen?” He tried again. “Do you need stronger pain relief?”

 

“Hell yeah I do! Send the guy into jab me!”

 

“One for me too, waiter,” her husband said with a gaping grin. “On the jiffy!”

 

He left, relived for the excuse not to stay in the room, and went to the nurse station to phone Ron. When the man came it took fifteen minutes to get Harleen to sit still long enough to slip the needle into her spine. Afterwards she slumped across the bed giggling lazily as her partner kept up the torrent of jokes.

 

“Hey, midhusband, should you have a baby after thirty five?”

 

“It’s certai—”

 

“Of course not! Who wants thirty six babies?! _Haha!_ Oh, I forgot to ask; where is the best place to store breast milk?”

 

“It’ll be fine in—”

 

“In breasts of course!”

 

“The breasts!” Harley yelled and laughed. “Good one, Puddin’!”

 

Clark forced a smile as he felt her belly one more time to be sure.

 

“I know, Harl. Hey, I was wondering; what’s the best way to determine the baby’s sex?”

 

“Childbirth,” Clark answered.

 

“Childbir—oh. You’ve heard that one before? Well, did you hear the one about the doctor and the priest with the infected prostate? _Hehe_ … you see, the doctor got this woman pregnant and they didn’t know what to do but then this priest, Catholic mind you, he came in to get surgery done on his prostate and the doctor he got an idea. When the priest woke up he had a baby! Doc! Doc! Who’s baby is this? Why it’s yours! But that’s impossible! I pulled it out myself, sir! It must be a miracle! Wait until I tell the Archbishop he has—”

 

“Why you pokin’ so much?” Harley asked.

 

“Don’t interrupt me when I’m telling a joke!”

 

“S-sorry, Puddin’.”

 

“I think your baby might be in vertex,” Clark answered.

 

The woman blinked up at him through her almost clownish amount of makeup. “What that supposed to mean?”

 

“It means the baby is facing upwards. It’s spine against your spine.”

 

“Oh, I knew that.”

 

Clark blinked. “It isn’t in your progress notes.”

 

“Yeah. I took it out.”

 

In dismay. “Why would you do that?”

 

“For Dr. W,” she declared proudly. “I drove all the way up from Gotham in labour so I could get a world renowned baby surgeon to cut me open! Ain’t it _clever_? I read he only did emergencies but doc down in the gloomy city said rolly polly baby usually became an emergency if it went undiagnosed..”

 

He stared at her in bewilderment. “You drove? In labour? From Gotham?”

 

“Puddin’ doesn’t like to drive much do you?”

 

“For Bruce?” Clark pushed.

 

“Yeah!”

 

He looked around the room. “I, eh, I’m afraid Dr Wayne doesn’t handle vertex. We should still be able to deliver vaginally with the help of forceps.”

 

She gazed up at him in obvious disappointment. “But I wanted to tell everyone I got the famous Gotham doc to do it.” She frowned. “And what are forceps?”

 

“They’re—”

 

“Tongs!” Her partner declared eagerly.

 

 

\--

 

 

“I didn’t know he was such a big draw,” Clark muttered miserably.

 

“Oh come on, Smallville. I had the Queens in last week. Do you think Star City’s millionaires decided to birth here because they like the view? People like to think if something goes wrong they have the best there to save them.”

 

“But he’s not the best.”

 

“No, but he’s pretty damn good and pretty famous.”

 

“I don’t get why he’s so famous,” Clark interjected. “Just because a couple million from his parents?”

 

“Billion.”

 

“Bill—what?” Clark almost dropped his coffee. “Why would he be a doctor if he already had billions of dollars?”

 

A small shrug. “His pa was a doctor before he was killed. Family tradition I suppose. Why don’t you ask him?”

 

 

\--

 

 

“Good work, Barbara, just one more little push… that’s it; your baby’s head’s out.”

 

“R-really?”

 

Her husband stood by her bedside looking completely at a loss as to what to do; hand captured in the clamp of his wife’s. They were a slightly older couple in their second labour and the man had a Gotham City Police Department badge in his belt.

 

Another couple from Gotham.

 

“You can reach down and have a feel if you like,” Clark encouraged with a smile and watched as her hand fell between her legs to gently stroke the crown of the baby’s head.

 

“Oh,” a tear fell out the corner of her eye. “Oh, god, it’s… it’s happening, Jim. I’m doing it.”

 

“Of course you are,” Clark said with a broad smile. “Baby will be here with the next contraction. Are you ready? Just little pushes now.”

 

He watched as the woman readied herself, pushed her feet into the mounts at the end of the bed, and puffed her cheeks as the contraction built. The baby slipped out into Clark’s arms, kicked him hard in the chest, and wailed until he put her on Barbara’s chest under her shirt.

 

“Oh, Jim! It’s a girl!”

 

“Barbara Jr.” He named her with obvious relief; his eyes going soft as he gazed at the wriggling body under his wife’s shirt. "One for each of us now."

 

“She’s a feisty one,” Clark commented as he rubbed his chest wishing he didn’t bruise quite so easily.

 

“Do you have to weigh her right now? Can I hold her for a bit first? Please?”

 

A low laugh. “Sure. Just don’t tell my boss.”

 

“Thank you.”

 

He left the couple to go and proudly declare the delivery on the care board and almost ran straight into Bruce as he strode towards the door.

 

“H-hey!”

 

They both stopped.

 

Alarmed. “Br— Dr. Wayne! What are you doing? There is nothing wrong with the baby or the parents. They’re fine!”

 

“I know.”

 

“Then why are you here?” He asked; voice ringing with accusal. “I just delivered her. We don't need you!”

 

His eyes flashed. “Her? A girl?” Then with a touch of regret. “It’s over?”

 

“You…” a moment of realisation. “Knew them?”

 

He scowled. “Yes, Kent, even us soulless money hungry doctors have the odd friend.”

 

“What? No! I don’t think that I…”

 

Bruce glared at him; icy eyes shining hauntingly blue in the stark ward light. “You’ve already made your opinions of me well known, Kent. Spare me the false courtesy.” He pushed roughly by him, bumped the bruise Barbara Jr. left, and slipped wordlessly into the birthing suite.

 

 

\--

 

 

Clark had never had someone dislike him before. There were people he wasn’t partial to and people that weren’t partial to him but, to his knowledge, no one had ever actively disliked him. What was worse was that it was his fault. Bruce thought the reason he hated seeing him in the ward was due to some kind of prejudice against doctors and the wealthy. And he had let the man believe that. Let that belief fester because he was too pettily affronted by a common prejudgment to correct him.

 

And, Clark grudgingly admitted, perhaps a little part of him was a bit resentful of how much the doctors got paid. He delivered over twenty percent more babies than the statistics showed the average midwife doing a year, worked between twelve to eighteen hour shifts, and still would have made more money managing a drive-through.

 

He wasn’t doing this for the money. That much he had always known. But, he realised now, neither was Bruce. The man was a born billionaire with enough assets to live comfortably on some island in the middle of Pacific and never work a day in his life. But he didn’t. He came in here day after day to save lives. He was a hero no matter how many different kinds of cars he drove in and even if he only showed up when something went wrong.

 

“Hold on Iris,” Clark said as he jogged beside her bed as it was wheeled towards the operating theatre. “Do not push. Hold on.”

 

“Oh god,” she clutched her stomach. “It hurts. Oh god. Barry!”

 

On the other side of the bed her partner easily kept pace looking like all the colour had been sucked out of cheeks. “Is she going to be okay? Are they going to be okay?”

 

Twins were always trickier than a standard birth. Both could not assume the birthing position at the same time so while the first birth usually went smoothly the second was a juggling act trying and make sure they came down roughly the same way as their sibling. Iris’s first twin was a textbook birth; a boy newly named Don weighing seven pounds with flushed red skin who popped his thumb in his mouth the first chance he got. The second twin and smaller of the two – a girl – had initially moved perfectly to follow her brother but somehow flipped at the last minute and dropped down the birth canal in breach.

 

Clark’s heart had almost stopped beating when he saw the baby’s vulva coming down towards him instead of her head.

 

A baby in breach was bad. A baby in breach halfway down the birth canal was very bad.

 

“I have to,” she moaned. “I have to push. I can’t… I can’t! Ah!”

 

“Hold on Iris. I…” he clambered up onto the hospital bed as it swung around a bend to kneel between her knees. The baby’s head was still on the wrong side of the cervix and was the biggest part of the infant; the hardest to push through and at this angle Iris also had to get the broadest part of the head through first; the chin as opposed to the crown.

 

He reached up to feel the girl’s bottom and try to judge how much of the baby had gone through. To his surprise it felt like she had dropped a lot. Iris’s body gave another, involuntary, heave and the baby’s body dropped further; the bottom half of her slipping out to protrude from her mother.

 

“Clark,” the woman moaned. “God, it burns. I need to push, please just tell me I can push.”

 

They arrived at the operating theatre door and Clark rode the cot through the massive double doors.

 

“Okay,” he decided rashly. “Come on. One last chance to do this the old fashioned way, hey? Give me a big push.”

 

“Kent!” Bruce emerged from the scrub; eyes blazing. “The baby is in breach. She’s my patient now. Get off.”

 

“No,” he panted. “I’m not leaving her with you. It’s the first rule… no Iris don’t worry; keep pushing that’s it. Go.”

 

“Keep pushing, Kent?!”

 

“Look at me, Iris. Your baby is going to be just fine. Just one more shot at this. Big push.”

 

“What the hell are you trying to prove, Kent?”

 

“The baby’s dropped,” he told him. “She can deliver it.”

 

“It’s head is still in the uterus.”

 

“Her legs are out. That’s happened in less than a minute without her pushing. This baby is much smaller than the last. She’s fully dilated. Please, just give me a chan—”

 

“Ah!” Iris finished pushing, gasped for breath, and started again.

 

“That’s it. Keep it going keep it going.”

 

Out the corner of his eye he saw the doctor push aside a nurse to see the progress just as the bottom half of the baby slipped out to the neck. The tiny purple body shivered to life; the head still trapped within her mother and the umbilical cord crushed against the side of her skull.

 

If neither the head was out nor the cord open to the placenta there was no way that baby was getting any oxygen.

 

“Iris, I need you to push _hard_ right now.”

 

Her partner had appeared at her side half dressed for surgery and looking around in confusion.

 

“I can’t I…” Iris began.

 

He had never spoken so firmly to a woman in labour before. “Right now, Iris. We need to get the baby’s head out. Now. Push. Hard.”

 

“I… it’s gone.” Tears rolling down her cheeks. “The contraction…”

 

Bruce bent onto the bed over Iris’s leg, unapologetically leaning into Clark’s lap, and delivered one quick cut with a flash of a blade. The baby fell out of the freshly opened mother with a gargled wail and into the doctor’s arms. Clark retrieved her and held her as she started to cry in earnest and Bruce, not moving, called for stitches. The episiotomy was a precision perfect mediolateral incision neither excessively large nor untidy. Just enough to let the baby pass through.

 

Clark couldn’t move. Bruce was still against his folded legs as he promptly started to close the wound; leaning into the unconventional position to get a closer access to his work; not discouraged by the awkward angle. As he was Clark couldn’t lean forward to give the baby to the exhausted looking mother so instead, assuming all regulation for the operating theatre had long flown out the window, turned to the father.

 

“Take your shirt off. She needs skin on skin contact.”

 

He hurried to obey; ridding his top half of clothes faster than he would have thought possible and gently taking his daughter into his arms.

 

“Is she…?”

 

“She’s fine. She’s perfect thanks to Iris here.”

 

He looked at his wife. “Are you…?”

 

Iris looked utterly wrecked but sill gazed at the baby in Barry’s arms with open adoration. “She looks like my brother.”

 

“Does that hurt?” His eyes flicked unhappily towards Bruce still stitching her up.

 

Iris managed a weak smile. “Honestly, honey, that’s nothing now.”

 

Bruce finished, tied off his last stitch, and straightened. “Finish your job, Kent. Then meet me outside.”

 

Bruce didn’t have the authority to order him around but something in his voice invited no argument. Once Clark weighed and wrapped the little girl – Dawn Allen; almost a whole pound lighter than her brother – he slunk guiltily out into the corridor; grossly aware how little this man had thought of him before he broke all procedure in his operating theatre.

 

“What the hell is your problem, Kent?”

 

“I’m sorry,” he began earnestly. “I know that wasn’t regulation or…”

 

“‘I’m not leaving her with you?’ Jesus, Kent I know you don't think anything of me but I do take care of my damn patients!”

 

“No," he tried, "that has nothing to do with you.”

 

“To hell it doesn’t.”

 

“It doesn’t! I’m not lying. It’s the first thing I learnt when I started working here.”

 

“What?!" The man yelled. "To hate me?!”

 

“No, to hate _seeing_ you." He attempted to explain. "I’m a midwife, Bruce, I only ever see you when something goes wrong.”

 

Eyes dark despite their pale colour. “Bullshit. You hated me from the moment you first saw me. You didn’t even know me then.”

 

“The baby born in the car park?”

 

“Yes.”

 

A surge of sick anger. “I had been working as an intern for _months_ before that. I was in surgery with you when that baby had the knot in its cord.”

 

Bruce frowned. “You were?”

 

“I took care of the baby! You passed him off to me. But I suppose you would never notice a lowly midwife. You only saw me when you thought I was a doctor. But, that’s okay. I didn’t need you to care about me. I just took care of the baby, and the parents, and that’s what midwives do. I support them, help them; I’ve been through this with them so I’m not just going to abandon them and pass them off onto you.”

 

Darkly. “So I can make easy money after you’ve spent hours in the trenches?”

 

“No, damn it, that’s not what I think! I don’t hate you," Clark ploughed on, "I know you’re not doing it for the money, it’s just every time I see you it means something has gone wrong. Can’t you get that? And then you said because I’m a male midwife I must have been a failed doctor.”

 

“I didn’t say that.”

 

“You implied it, damn it." His hands were fists at his side. "I was angry. I’m _still_ angry."

 

“Less than two percent of midwives are men,” Bruce said bitterly and crossed his arms. “You can imagine my curiosity. Not many boys grow up wanting to be midwives.”

 

“Did you grow up wanting to be a doctor?”

 

Without a moment of hesitation. “Yes.”

 

“Well,” Clark looked aside. “I grew up wanting to be a professional footballer.”

 

Bruce’s eyebrows skyrocketed. “And when that didn’t work out you became a _midwife_?”

 

“It did work out.”

 

A sceptical look.

 

Clark tightened his fists until the skin on his knuckles was white. “Why do you think just because I'm a man and a midwife I must have failed somehow? I wasn’t a named player or anything yet but I was making money enough to live," he told him angrily. "More than I’m making now. But I wasn’t… it wasn’t what I thought it would be like as a kid. I wanted to be a real part of people’s lives, to help them through things, to do something good. Can't you understand? Football for me wasn’t that. So I quit and started delivering babies instead and you know what? I love it. So, I’m sorry I made you think I hated you, I’m sorry you hate me, and I’m sorry for fucking up your surgery.”

 

Bruce. "You..."

 

He turned on his heel and marched back to the nurse’s station and staff room before the man could respond. All the women in it were suspiciously preoccupied and ignored him as he moved to put the weight, colour score, and time of birth for each twin up on the wall.

 

The rest of the day past in the blur; he taught Iris how to breastfeed, examined Bruce’s handy work and told her the scar wouldn’t be large, and finally stopped the twins from crying when he moved them into the same cot. The woman Lois was looking after had a minor postpartum haemorrhage and after a frantic twenty minutes the bleeding stopped and he stayed back to help her wash the red off the floor.

 

“So,” she said lightly; scrubs bloodied and forearms covered in soap. “A football player, huh?”

 

He groaned.

 

_Oh hell._

 

 

\--

 

 

Over the next month photos of his time on the field seemed to find their way onto every computer’s wallpaper, screensaver, and profile picture. He found a couple of hardcopies hanging on the wall with all the thank you cards, Cat painted her nails his old team colours, and at one point a dark haired newborn was dressed in a tiny football jersey complete with shoulder pads.

 

“How did you do it?” Perry asked him as he mournfully looked at a screensaver of Clark falling on his face during a game. “Go from _that_ to _this_?”

 

“Oestrogen and testosterone aren’t that different when you see them close up,” he told him.

 

“Profound,” he growled as Cat sashayed back into the nurses’ station with the night’s stack of pizza and dropped one on Clark’s lap with a seductive pur.

 

“There you go, quarterback.”

 

 

\--

 

 

Clark walked out of the maternity building, grimaced at the new sunlight spearing like planks of wood out from the horizon, and wandered around until he found where he had parked his car.

 

It was an old red Ford Laser with a body like a toy and a useless antenna thrusting proudly towards the sky. The door creaked as he opened it, seat sunk alarmingly under his weight, and as he turned the key the ignition clicked.

 

Then nothing.

 

The engine was silent.

 

He frowned and with a sickening suspicion looked at the light dial beside the steering wheel. It was on. He’d left the lights on all night. The battery was dead.

 

_Fuck._

 

He ran his fingers through his hair and tried to think who he could call or will up the energy to deal with this problem himself. It had been a hard night despite only one baby being born; Stevie delivering. There was a woman who needed a paternity test on her baby before she left, another who had been in and out four times that night refusing to accept that the tightening she was feeling weren’t contractions, and a third whose baby had died and had come in to get it out via voluntary caesarean. On top of that there was a class coming through, Lex Corp was trying to buy the hospital, and somehow the paperwork had stacked up higher than the computer screens.

 

And he, in a scheduling he was sure was borderline illegal, had less than twenty four hours before he had to do it all again.

 

“Do you have jump cables?”

 

Clark looked up to see Bruce Wayne sitting in his car – a sleek black luxury Jaguar –on the car park road.

 

He shook his head.

 

“Neither do I,” Bruce said simply. A pause. “Are you going to go back inside and ask who does?”

 

“I don’t want to go back in there today,” he answered honestly; too tired to care that this was the first time Bruce Wayne had talked to him since the Allen twins were born.

 

“Get in.”

 

He looked up. “What?”

 

“Get in. I’ll give you a lift.”

 

He should have protested. He had been nothing but trouble for Bruce and putting him out of his way so much now seemed to take a step beyond impolite. But the prospect of a quick trip home to a bed and the opportunity to sort all this out after a nights sleep was just too tempting no matter who offered.

 

Bruce’ car – this one – smelt crisp and new, had fierce firm leather seats, and an engine that never seemed to do anything but pur around Bruce’s seamless gearshifts. They had been driving for almost ten minutes before he realised he never told Bruce his address.

 

“I… um, do you need…”

 

Bruce turned down a side street; perfectly on route to his apartment.

 

“You know where I live?”

 

“After our conversation I realised I prejudged you.”

 

Clark looked at him uncertainly.

 

“I endeavoured to find out more about you so I wouldn’t make that mistake again.”

 

Nervously. “So you found out where I live?”

 

“I looked at your employee profile.” A long pause. “I… memorise details. I don’t mean to. It just… happens sometimes. Bits of riddles.”

 

“And my address is a bit of a riddle?” He asked; voice developing a touch of anger.

 

Without hesitation. “Yes.”

 

“What riddle?”

 

“You.”

 

His anger wasn’t developing anymore. “You’ve been spying on me?!”

 

“No. I’ve been finding out about you.”

 

“I can’t believe you. I apologised! What the hell do you have against me?”

 

“Nothing. You have a very clean history.” Bruce slid into another street and accelerated to the speed limit frighteningly fast. “Are you gay?”

 

 “I… I… that’s…”

 

“Your entire football team used to go out to strip clubs once every couple of weeks except for you.”

 

“How would you…?”

 

“Facebook statuses with tags that were never removed, the number of guests in the booking schedule at _Ladies Underneath_ , and photos.”

 

“That doesn’t…”

 

“No. But now you’ve worked with over twenty women for over a year most of which find you sexually appealing and some of which are very forward about it.”

 

His face was burning red. “That’s not true.”

 

“It is. Cat Grant especially has not been subtle.” A stern look. “You shouldn’t let her treat you like that.”

 

“She’s a friend.”

 

“Lois Lane is also a friend, also finds you attractive, yet doesn’t feel the need to belittle or molest you.” A pause. “You also have never had a relationship with a woman but judging from comments in your yearbook you were very close with a boy name Pete R—”

 

“Look,” Clark threw up his hands. “I… it doesn’t matter… just leave it.”

 

Bruce glided to a stop outside his apartment building. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

 

“I know! Jesus, Bruce. What the hell is this, huh? You just get off getting into my personal life like that? What is it to you?”

 

“You’re the only one who calls me Bruce.”

 

A silence.

 

“Everyone else calls me Bruce Wayne, doctor, or Wayne.”

 

“You call me Kent.”

 

“Yes.”

 

Then nothing. Somehow that was the end of the conversation, he was climbing out of the car, and Bruce was driving away in a car which hardly made a sound.

 

 

\--

 

 

Shayera Hol had a tattoo of eagle wings on her back, an ankh hanging around her neck, and gold makeup framing her eyes. Jon Stewart was a military man, still wore a large green class ring, and had already bought their son a small basketball. By all rights they shouldn’t be a couple, let alone be having a baby, let alone be as in love as they obviously were.

 

He took her from overnight into the birthing suite, broke her waters with a hook, and brought her an exercise ball to rock back and forth on. After a couple of hours of slow painful contractions she requested a shot of pethidine and lay drunkenly straddling the top of the bed as her baby slowly slipped down the birth canal.

 

“There you go. Nice and easy. Here he comes.”

 

“I feel drunk,” Shayera told him.

 

“I know; that’s just the pethidine. It’ll be fine.”

 

She looked over her shoulder at him. “Will _he_ be fine?”

 

“Yes, he’s coming right now. Can you feel him?”

 

She nodded, bowed her head into the top of the mattress, and moaned as the top of her son’s head poked through into the open air.

 

“I…”

 

Clark looked over his shoulder to see Jon standing holding the miniature basketball like a shield in front of him; eyes fixed on Shayera’s vagina as a gush of blood and water trickled around the bald point of the baby’s uncovered head.

 

“That’s a… a very… multipurpose hole,” he observed; cheeks looking strangely grey.

 

“Do you want to make sure Shayera’s okay for me?” He suggested.

 

Jon seized on the opportunity to stand at the head of the bed and hold her hand; clearly taking more comfort from the contact that the woman herself.

 

“Yes, that’s it. Head’s out. Hello boy. Now just the shoulders.”

 

When he was born he slumped against the bed and mewled in protest as Clark gathered him up and passed him between Shayera’s legs so she could hold him while the afterbirth came.

 

“Shayera? Did I read in your birth plan you wanted to keep the placenta?”

 

Jon looked utterly horrified. “What?”

 

“Yeah,” she rolled and looked at the container her held. “I want to eat it.”

 

Jon. “God help us.”

 

“It’s good for lactation,” she informed him dryly as Clark cut away the cord and packaged the organ. “Men. You’ve fought in wars but you can’t stomach the idea of eating a bit of meat.” She blinked as she remembered Clark’s presence. “Forgive me. Not _all_ men.”

 

He smiled and nodded towards the baby. “What’s his name?”

 

“Rex,” Jon loudly declared. “It’s a good strong name.”

 

“It an interesting alternative name,” Shayera said instead.

 

“Well understood.”

 

“Has many meanings.”

 

“Down to earth.”

 

“Wild.”

 

“Named after a football player and an astronaut.”

 

“An actor and a dinosaur.”

 

He felt his lips curl. “At least we’re all in agreement, then. Happy Birthday, Rex.”

 

He didn’t believe in the old saying; opposites attract. There were a lot of couples he’d had which were odd – an outward mismatch – but he had never met a couple that were completely different from each other in the way the word ‘opposite’ suggested. There was always a common vein, a shared passion, a secret something that brought them together. Jon and Shayera were practically aliens to each other on the surface but beneath that they were fierce forward people with enough love it didn’t need to be said.

 

Opposite sides of the same coin.

 

 

\--

 

 

“Your baby is green.”

 

Clark looked up and swallowed when he saw Bruce standing behind the desk before him. The baby boy in his arms squeaked unhappily as he stopped rubbing his back and blinked up at him; his face tinged a mattered green.

 

“It’s just left over meconium,” Clark said sullenly.

 

Perry yelled from the other room. “You’re fired!”

 

Ignoring him. “I still need to give him a proper bath.” To the boy. “Sorry, Gar, I’ll get you normal colour once I get a room.”

 

Bruce’s eyes flashed. “Garfield Logan? He’s the one with Sakutia?”

 

“Yeah.” Clark didn’t look up. “He’s got the antibiotics and should be fine but we’re keeping him close just in case.”

 

“And because midwives have a compulsive desire to cuddle every baby they see,” Bruce informed him. “Even the ones covered in their own sh—”

 

“Is there something you wanted?” He interrupted.

 

“Yes.” Bruce answered an abruptly as always. “A midwife.”

 

He looked up at him and then back down at the baby in his arms. “Perry organises scheduling and Lois can recommend someone depending on what you need,” he said coolly; not bothering to ask why a surgeon suddenly needed a midwife.

 

“I want you, Clark.”

 

He kept his features stiff. “You don’t always get what you…” his voice failed him. Bruce had called him Clark. The doctor had never used his first name before. He didn’t even know the other man knew it. But, he supposed, the man knew his address so he probably knew a whole lot more than just his first name. “Wh—” he cleared his throat. “Why? I’m a junior midwife.” An accusing look. “Or have you decided it would be easier to stalk me if I’m stuck working with you?”

 

Face as telling as a mask. “Forgive me. I am aware my behaviour in that regard was inappropriate.”

 

Angrily. “That’s all you’re going to say?”

 

Garfield squeaked unhappily and he resumed rocking with a soft, apologetic noise.

 

“I am going to request you because I need a midwife according to your rules,” Bruce explained.

 

He scowled. “My rules?”

 

“Never leave them alone with the doctors.”

 

“That’s Lois’s rule,” he informed him.

 

“One you’re more passionate that even her in upholding.” An elongated silence. “I’m… not good at people, Clark. I never have been. I’m only good at puzzles.”

 

“You don’t say?”

 

The man frowned. “The infant has a bladder outlet obstruction.”

 

Clark stopped.

 

“I’m flying down to Gotham for the birth. I want a midwife I trust for the delivery and to support the parents.” A pause. “I trust you.”

 

 

\--

 

 

Bladder outlet obstructions were observable at the twenty week scans and when detected the parents were offered the option of emergency abortion. Clark couldn’t blame anyone for taking that option.

 

He looked at Mary Grayson’s twenty week ultrasounds and at the single dark patch swallowing the lower abdomen of the foetus. It was the bladder swollen far beyond its usual size as the unknown obstruction prevented any urine for leaving up the umbilical cord. The usually small organ consumed the majority of the tiny boy’s body and crushed his other developing organs up into the top half of his ribcage. Later scans showed that the steroids and emergency intervention had helped but despite all medication the child would still be born with potentially irreparable kidneys and lungs that could prove too small for survival.

 

“Not good odds,” the woman beside him said invoking an irrational sting of offence. She was one of the midwives on roster at Gotham Child Hospital; fiery red hair clipped on top of her head and face angular but sharply, stunningly, beautiful. Vicki Vale. On his other side a younger midwife with lush lips and a cool look was in the process of putting her strawberry blonde hair into a bun. Summer Gleason. The other two midwives on stand by were a broad shouldered woman named Jackie Ryder and another named Alexandra Knox. All of them skilled, friendly, and each one with more deliveries under his belt than him.

 

Despite it he would give his right hand to have any of the women from Metropolis instead. Lois, Cat, Jenny, and even Stevie. People he knew. People he could _trust_.

 

He looked over at Bruce talking with the Gotham doctors and thought perhaps he finally understood why the man had requested him last week and packed him into the air ambulance when the call came an hour before. This was a tricky situation in a foreign hospital and it was nice to have someone familiar to lean against even if it was the one person at work he had never quite gotten along with.

 

He was always there when something had gone wrong and he always managed to make it right again. To fix the unfixable. To change the tide even when it was so strongly against them. To succeed and save when Clark could not.

 

Despite everything; it was good to see Bruce Wayne.

 

 

\--

 

 

“You’re doing so well, Mary; he’s coming along perfectly,” Clark said warmly. “Just a couple more pushes.”

 

Mary looked around at the nurses waiting and ready in the cool coloured room. “Just a few more pushes?” She said; voice racked with grief.

 

She leant against the bed, absorbing matt on the floor between her legs, and Clark sitting on his heels behind her.

 

“Yes,” he answered gently. “It’s okay. We’re going to take care of him. It’s okay.” It’s okay. Not _he’s_ okay. The only comfort he could give; pitiably little in the face of everything they had, were, and still had to go through.

 

“It’s okay, Mary,” her husband John adopted it and rubbed the small of her back. “It’s okay.”

 

Her flanks shivered as the next contraction came and she buckled forward with a groan. Clark watched the progress of the baby’s head and waited for a moment before speaking.

 

“You’re not really pushing now, are you?”

 

Mary didn’t look at him; limbs shaking and breaths small and shallow. “He’s safe inside me,” she whispered after a pause. “He can breathe through the placenta. He doesn’t need lungs.”

 

“He needs to come out now, Mary.”

 

“I know...” She didn’t push even as the contraction continued; the denial obviously painful.

 

“What’s his name?” Clark tried. “Have you decided?”

 

“Richard,” John answered when Mary didn’t. “It’s a family name.”

 

“John, Mary, and Richard,” he sounded off the would be family roster. “The Flying Graysons.”

 

In surprise. “You’ve seen the show?”

 

“Heard of it… and may have sneaked a peek online.”

 

John smiled; the action small and bittersweet. “Haley never did manage to stop people filming the show.”

 

“Maybe because you two are incredible. If this little guy has your DNA he’s going to be one amazing little guy, I’m telling you. I can’t wait to meet him.”

 

A long pause. “I,” Mary breathed. “I think I’m ready to push now.”

 

“Take it home, Mrs,” John murmured gently. “I love you so much.”

 

Three big pushes later and the boy was slipping out of her in a graceful dive and landing in Clark arms. He looked perfect. Body fully forms, face already handsome, and shocking blue eyes blinking up at him in surprise.

 

“Hey, Happy Birthday. That was strange, wasn’t it? It’s a bit cold out here let me just wrap you up,” Clark spoke as he took him away and quickly dressed him as the other midwives and nurses strapped a pressured breathing mask to his face. He never cried. Clark prayed he was just one of the babies that didn’t and not that he didn’t have enough lung to do it.

 

“Okay,” Vicki said. “Let’s get him out of here.”

 

“One second,” Clark grabbed the little boy off the dressing table and carried him over to the parents; air tanks and all.

 

It wasn’t much. Not even ten minutes. But he couldn’t let them take the baby away without each parent getting a chance to hold him first. John watched in wonder as a tiny pink fist wrapped around his smallest finger and Mary kissed the boy’s brow. Then, as suddenly as he arrived, he was gone and Clark was alone with the grieving couple telling them exactly what was happening to their baby and when they’ll be able to see him again.

 

Two hours later he got the call and wheeled a pale faced Mary Grayson down into the observation room to see the tiny boy lying in the incubator amid a mess of tubes and with the massive mask still strapped onto his face.

 

He opened a porthole in the side of the massive container and nodded encouragingly.

 

“Go on. Say hi.”

 

John reached in and tentatively touched Richard’s fist.

 

“You can put your hand right on him. Let him know you’re there. You won’t hurt him.”

 

The man obeyed and the boy wriggled in response.

 

“He looks so perfect,” John breathed. “I can’t believe… it’s just all on the inside.”

 

“Do you want to touch him, Mary?”

 

The woman stared at her son for a long time before slowly shaking her head. “N-no, that’s alright. J-just let him sleep.”

 

 

\--

 

 

“I keep acting as if he’ll be with them soon,” Clark began as he and Bruce walked out of the strange hospital and into the strange city. “I taught her how to pump her breasts and wrap a baby. Should I be? Is he stable enough to operate?”

 

Blunt as ever. “It’s unlikely he will survive the procedure but I have recommended we perform it anyway as his kidneys appear to be fully functional and lungs may still be large enough to be conductive to survival.”

 

“Survival or normal life?” Clark asked nervously. “If he lives will he ever be able to run, play, or swing on the trapeze with them?”

 

“I don’t know.”

 

“You don’t know?”

 

The doctor sent him a tortured look. “He has to survive the night first, Clark. Then the surgery. Then months of medication to boost his lung size and all at the risk of potential kidney failure.” A long pause. “I don’t know. There is a chance he may pull out of this with nothing more than a scar but I don’t know.”

 

Clark hugged his coat around himself and stopped as they drew abreast with the small square hotel he was staying at. It was a miserable place; all windows facing the hospital and almost all occupants relatives to the diseased and dying.

 

“Why are we here?”

 

Bruce looked up at him.

 

“Why didn’t the Graysons fly to Metropolis like people usually do when they want to see you?”

 

Simply. “Their insurance stopped covering them when they decided not to get an abortion.”

 

Clark stared at him in shock. “T-they can’t do that, can they?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“But… Jesus, it’s 2014! There are safety nets.”

 

“In theory.” Bruce looked up at the hotel. “My father used to take bullets out of criminals that arrived on our doorstep when I was a boy.” A grim pause. “I don’t take out bullets. Just babies.”

 

“And you fix those babies.”

 

“If I can.” He looked at the hotel for a moment longer before turning to Clark. “Do you want to stay with me tonight?”

 

Clark didn’t know the moment he first wanted him. Perhaps he had always been attracted to Bruce Wayne. Perhaps that had been one of the unspoken conflicts between them. Perhaps that was the reason why the other man’s money had bothered him; a gross division between them that made the unlikely conquest all the more impossible. Two people from different worlds.

 

Wayne Manor didn’t have power, water, and the furniture was covered in white sheets. It was still the most impressive home he had ever seen; sweeping staircases, crystal chandeliers, and fireplaces large enough to swallow entire walls. The kitchen looked like it belonged to a five star restaurant, driveway long enough to be a road, and halls echoed as they walked through them.

 

“Are you ever going to come back and live here?”

 

“One day,” Bruce promised.

 

Then, through some unspoken agreement, Clark was moving forward, pushing him against the wall, and they were kissing. It was open, greedy, but still torturously slow and laced with all the grief and weight of the day.

 

Guiltily, Clark realised, it wasn’t enough to stop it being beautiful.

 

A breathless exchange of quiet desperation.

 

Somehow they made it to what was probably a lovely couch hidden under a dusty sheet and Clark was watching in the torch light as Bruce’s hips thrust into Clark’s fist; eyes heavy, pulse visible in his neck, and bottom lip held between his teeth. Breath ragged but voice silent.

 

He moved back, ran a thumb reassuringly over the protruding shape of Bruce's hip, and swallowed the long purpling curve of his erect member. He sucked him until Bruce was spasming into his mouth – flesh of his thigh twitching with promise – and then he swallowed around him; humming as he finally heard Bruce moan. A long, low, sound bubbling up form his throat as he came inside Clark’s mouth.

 

It was salty, strong, but sweet enough to speak to a doctor’s diet. It was also _Bruce’s_ come and that somehow made the simple stark taste an indescribable delicacy.

 

He climbed up the other man’s stated body, shaking with need, and humped against his hip too exhausted to organise anything else but precome, friction, and the beautiful billionaire beneath him. Bruce. Bruce who held him, murmured sweet filthy nothings in his ear, and kissed him until he sprayed come across the man’s silk work shirt that probably cost more than Clark’s entire wardrobe put together.

 

In that moment it didn't matter.

 

He somehow managed to manipulate Bruce onto his side and spooned in behind him; stealing a small childish sense of satisfaction at assuming what could be considered the top position against the genius, over qualified, billionaire who had somehow – amid everything else he was doing – seduced him. Seduced him so wholly that he felt like he still hadn't emerged from the other man's spell. Deep, dark, and dangerous like the sea.

 

But, he knew, he would.

 

“You’ve killed us.”

 

Bruce leant against his body. “Hm?”

 

“I mean it. We had a chance but now we’re doomed.”

 

After a pause. “How so?”

 

“If that boy dies,” Clark whispered. “I won’t ever be able to fall in love with you.”

 

The words hung in the air; a sudden stilling declaration.

 

He hadn’t meant to say it aloud, haven’t even realised it until he had said it, but it was true. Because if Richard Grayson died then that would be what he would always affiliate their first time with. The spell of Bruce's seduction would break and he would wash up bare and alone on the beach.

 

If Dick died so would… whatever it was that made him kiss Bruce Wayne.

 

“I know,” the man said softly, sadly, and with a strange scrape in his voice like he was speaking passed an old, accepted, pain. “I know.”

 

 

\--

 

 

Richard Grayson survived the night, managed to fill his diaper, and was reluctantly deemed ‘as stable as he’s going to get’ for surgery. Clark stood by, ready to rewrap and take the boy down to infant recovery, as the tiny body was laid out in the middle of the table.

 

He had never seen Bruce perform surgery on infants before. He had always known that was his speciality but in Metropolis there had never been a need for him to occupy the operating room while it was happening.

 

It was a hard thing to watch.

 

Bruce opened the boy up from collarbone to navel and began putting together the puzzle he found inside. First the oversized deflated bladder was moved down into proper position and stitched, then intestines, and then the stomach. A nurse was sucking up blood and a second doctor was using some biodegradable gauze to fix everything into position. When everything else was arranged Bruce gently moved the undersized lungs and furiously beating heart down into the proper position behind the ribs and stretched out the crushed organs as much as he safely could. They were even smaller than Clark imagined; tiny balloons puffing in a chest too large for them.

 

He watched those lungs. Watched them work. Felt his own chest tighten as, with each breath, he became sure it was the boy’s last. His fear was unsubstantiated. 

 

His lungs didn’t stop.

 

His heart did.

 

At precisely eleven forty four am.

 

 

\--

 

 

“His heart stopped on the operating table but the surgeons were able to start it again and now he’s back in intensive care,” Clark informed the couple. “He’s recovering and the worst of it is over. It’s up to him now. If he can survive these next few days he can survive the rest of his life though there may be some long term complications that won’t be apparent for some time.” A slow deep breath. “He’s a fighter, I’ll tell you that, and I think he’s got everyone in the ward wrapped around his little finger. Even the doctors love him.” He looked at Mary. “Are you sure you still don’t want to touch him?”

 

The woman looked stricken. “I… I don’t think… if I… then I’ll be saying…”

 

“That’s okay,” he hugged her as two tears streaked down her face. “It’s okay.”

 

 

\--

 

 

Three days later Dick was still breathing.

 

Clark stood in intensive care and gently rocked the boy in his arms; finally rid of all but a basic IV tube and sucking his thumb as he slept. He had cried that morning for the first time and after some prompting Mary had even agreed to hold him. It had taken even more prompting to get her to let him go.

 

“I’m going to leave you to it soon,” Clark told him. “But that’s okay because your ma and pa are going to come and you, I hear, will be running away with the circus. That’s going to be fun. I bet everyone will like you there as much as they like you here. I bet you’re going to grow up and be an even better acrobat than them.”

 

“Do you always talk to people who can’t understand you?”

 

“Do you always sneak up on people?” Clark retaliated as the man approached in a white practitioner’s coat he had never before seen him wear before. A regulation never enforced in the maternity building of Metropolis General.

 

“Only you,” Bruce replied and Clark wasn’t sure for a moment if he was joking or dead serious. “You’re flying back to Metropolis tonight?”

 

“Yes. I want to sleep in my own bed a couple of times before I’m on shift again. There is a woman I’ve been looking after who’s going to come in and be induced. I really hope I get to deliver her baby. What about you? When are you coming back?”

 

Coolly. “I don’t know.”

 

“You…” Clark heart stuttered as the meaning of those words struck him like a ton of bricks. “You don’t know?” He rasped. “You’re staying?”

 

“I don’t know.”

 

“But… you work in Metropolis. You’re the hospital’s star surgeon. You can’t just leave.”

 

“I missed Gotham, Clark. It’s my home.”

 

“But… you’ve been in Metropolis for over a year. Isn’t it your home too now?”

 

“It’s not the same.”

 

Hopelessly. “Why?”

 

Bruce didn’t bother to answer that. He stepped forward, tipped Clark’s head down, and kissed him. It was tender, breathless, and ached somewhere deep inside him when it ended. Dick slept undisturbed through the whole thing; ignoring the bodies around him.

 

“Bruce I… I’m sorry I never gave you a fair chance. I was an arse. I’m sorry…”

 

“Why did you quit football, Clark?”

 

“I wasn’t happy,” he answered glumly. “It wasn’t what I thought it would be.”

 

“I’m not happy in Metropolis,” Bruce said. “I’ve never really been happy there. I only went there to try and get away from all the expectations on me here. They wanted me to be a doctor like my father and run the company while I…” a long pause. “I wasn’t even sure I wanted to be a doctor anymore. Not then.”

 

“But now?”

 

His eyes sunk to Dick and then back to him. “I think I want to be again now.”

 

 

\--

 

 

“Clark’s got mail!” Jenny ran into the room waving the letter over her head. “It’s your very first thank you card! Go on! Open it open it. We’ll add it to the wall.”

 

Cat wheeled her office chair closer to him and leant over his shoulder as he diligently ripped open the envelope and retrieved the simple card. The words _thank you_ were written in cursive across the front; cheap and simple. When he opened it two items fell out. The first was a photo of Dick Grayson being held by a ringleader and looking at the camera with wide curious eyes, the top of his scar just visible peaking out the top of his shirt. The second was a ticket to the circus.

 

“Oh my gosh!” Jenny snatched the ticket. “I’ve never got one of these!”

 

“Yet it is only a single,” Cat pouted. “It would have been nice not to go alone.”

 

“I don’t even know then the circus is in town,” Clark mumbled and discreetly removed her from his shoulder.

 

“I can find out!” Jenny declared happily. “Oh, what if we all go? Stevie! You want to go to the circus?”

 

“Isn’t this the circus?” The woman grumbled as she picked up the phone. “Yes, this is a midwife speaking… alright, are you in pain?”

 

“Well,” Jenny crossed her arms. “I still thi—”

 

“What are you lot doing?” Lois stormed over; hair flying loose of its bun. “I have five babies thinking of making their debut tonight, a strange surgeon, and you lot are here reading thank you cards?”

 

“Clark gets to go to the circus,” Jenny told her.

 

“Alone,” Cat added.

 

Lois lifted an eyebrow as the red head waved the ticket in her face and bent down to pick up the photo. “This the BOO baby in Gotham? He looks like he’s doing well. Going to be a looker too. Though I’m surprised they’re sending you the card and not Wayne. Or was he his usual antisocial self?”

 

“He never spoke to them.”

 

Lois rolled her eyes. “That would be right. He’s brilliant that man but really not good with people. He would make the worst midwife.”

 

“Maybe he did get one,” Clark suggested. “I mean, he did do the actual surgery.”

 

“Maybe he did,” Lois said. “So you can go to the circus with him some time. Right now I’m going to need you in room two.”

 

He looked at her suspiciously. “I thought I was waiting for the Harper baby. What’s in room two?”

 

She dropped a birth plan on the desk in front of him. “Go find out, hero.”

 

Room two turned out to be occupied by the Anders family complete with a number of fiery haired green eyed near orange skinned children giggling and rolling around on the floor. It took over an hour to convince the father to take the children to a relative’s house for the birth and when he came back he brought a backpack full of purple clothes for his unborn daughter.

 

It was almost midnight when the girl did come; bursting out of her mother like a salmon out of the river leaving Clark there to mop up and present the newly named Kory to her beaming parents.

 

It was a simple birth; easy, safe, and with not a lot of pain. The kind of birth midwives dreamt about. Still some wretched part of him wondered what Bruce was doing at that moment, if he was attending to a birth gone wrong, and if the midwife looking after that birth had left the mother alone with the doctor. He wondered if that woman would remember Bruce or just the midwife that had taken care of her, if she would send him a thank you card, or if all the good he had done always came in the shadowy frighting form of ‘something gone wrong’.

 

It didn’t seem right or fair that he got the smiles, the thank yous, and was allowed to share the happy moments of birth when all Bruce saw was blood, pain, and fear. Especially when he did care; care more than Clark thought even he knew.

 

Cared enough to provide a free operation to a struggling circus family, to make sure someone was there for them even when he couldn’t bring himself to be, and refuse to let an infant die on the operating table despite the overwhelming odds.

 

 

\--

 

 

“Is this all you midwives eat?”

 

Clark almost flew out of his chair at the sound of the other man’s voice.

 

“Bruce!”

 

He hadn’t seen or heard from the other man in over a month but somehow, in that time, Bruce had subtly changed to become even more stunning. The doctor looked down at him, eyes bluer than a newborns, and casual clothes looking intrinsically out of place on his body. His lip twitched upward in what Clark suspected was his version of a grin.

 

“Hello Clark.”

 

“Hah!” Lois spun around from where she had been updating the care board to jab a marker towards the intruder. “Firstly, you don’t work here anymore so this staffroom is off limits,” she declared self righteously. “Secondly, I’ll have you know this food is an important part of midwife culture,” she nodded towards the coffee table piled high as always with various cakes, cookies, biscuits, breads, muffins, chocolates, sweet rolls, and several sweetmeats. “A time honoured tradition.”

 

“Is it?”

 

“Midwives have to have bums!” Jenny called from the other room. “Part of the job description!”

 

“And we spend twelve hours at a time squatting looking up women’s skirts so it tends to balance back out,” Lois declared.

 

Bruce looked through the wall from where Jenny’s voice had sounded. “Do midwives also not understand the concept of privacy?” He asked.

 

At this even Clark had to laugh.

 

“We put our hands up privates for a living,” he told him. “So no. Not really. And this ward has never been one for not listening in.”

 

Lois snorted. “You should stop having such interesting conversations then, Smallville.” She finished updating, picked up her coffee, and with a knowing look vacated the staffroom to strike up a loud conversation with Perry at the nurse station.

 

“What are you doing here?” Clark asked as he slowly stood.

 

“It’s a two hour drive,” the man informed him.

 

A pause. “That’s a long drive.”

 

“No it’s not.”

 

“It, um, kind of is.”

 

Low. “I like driving.”

 

Clark laughed softly. “I figured. But that doesn’t really answer my question.”

 

The silence that followed that statement seemed to drag out forever. Bruce looked around, frowned once more at the display of food, and looked back at him. “I was invited to the circus.”

 

Clark stared at him, smiled. “Me too.”

 

“I thought it likely. You were their hero after all.”

 

He snorted. “You saved the kid.”

 

“But you were the one there for them.” Bruce caught sight of the care board and his eyes lit on the columns of information; quickly digesting the shorthand and taking note of the time of births. “You delivered twins?”

 

“Not nearly as scary as last time,” he said. “Thank God.”

 

“That was five hours ago,” Bruce continued, still looking at the board.

 

“Yes.”

 

“You get off…?”

 

“In two hours,” he answered.

 

“Good,” Bruce turned to leave.

 

“Wh—Wait!” Clark raced after him. “Where are you going?”

 

“Outside,” the man informed him. “When you’re finished I’ll drive you to the circus.”

 

He stared at him. “You want to go to the circus _now_?”

 

“No. In four hours. Two hours until you get off shift. Two hours to drive to Gotham.” Bruce stopped so suddenly Clark had to back peddle to stay with him. “Unless you don’t want to.” Voice tight and reserved.

 

“No! I want to I… Damn it, Bruce, you haven’t spoken to me in a month and now you want to take me out after a twelve hour shift?”

 

“You can sleep in the car.”

 

“In the car?”

 

“And then stay in Gotham the night.”

 

“I… God, you’re a… I don’t even know what you are.” But, Clark realised, he wanted to if only to see where this strange uncertain road might lead. If only for the chance to see the other man in casual clothes every day. If only to figure out just how short that two hour gap between them was because, what had felt like an impossible distance a moment before, now suddenly felt like the fleeting breath before a kiss.

 

Bruce seemed to sense some shift in him, turned and studied him for a moment. His eyes were piercing, penetrating, and bewitchingly beautiful.

 

"Bruce..." he began.

 

The man didn't wait for him to construct the sentence. He stepped forward, hooked a hand behind Clark’s neck, and kissed him; entirely heedless of the midwives moving in the hallway around him, the pregnant woman shuffling towards her room, or Lois, Jenny, Cat, Perry, and Stevie all at the nurses station behind them. He saw out the corner of his eye Perry wearily turn his back and walk into the staff room, Cat stare at him like he’s just grown a pair of rainbow wings, and Jenny hide a giggle behind a cough. Then, as suddenly as it started it was over and Bruce was walking away towards the car park without a backwards glance.

 

It was the longest two hours of his life.

 

Then, as they sped down the high way between the cities, it was the shortest.

 

They arrived late to the show, sat near the back of the stands, and watched each act dissolve into the next. Clark liked the horses and Bruce hated the clowns. The Flying Graysons themselves weren’t performing but after the show they went backstage to see baby Dick clumsily wave a toy robin over his head. Clark stole the opportunity to hug a baby slightly larger than he was used to and Bruce inspected the fading scar with a critical eye.

 

Afterwards he fucked Bruce in his car, saw Wayne Manor again this time with running water; electricity; and a butler that had raised the boy billionaire, and woke up naked in the master bedroom feeling better than he had in months.

 

It became a pattern. Sometimes he would go to Gotham. Sometimes Bruce would stay in Metropolis. But usually the man would stop by his old workplace, each time in a different car, and every time he did he rendered Clark dizzy with giddiness. It was irrational, silly, and stupid.

 

But Clark loved seeing Bruce Wayne.

**Author's Note:**

> I give you the AU nobody ever wanted or asked for! I hope you enjoyed it regardless.
> 
> Please be advised that I am neither a midwife nor a mother so my experience in this area is very limited. If there are any inaccuracies or errors in depiction please feel free to let me know. I became aware at some point while writing this that the birthing structure at hospitals in the US might be a bit different than other parts of the world and doctors might play a much more major role and midwives a more minor one. If this is the case I apologise.
> 
> I've been doing a lot of research recently into pregnancy for another story I'm writing which is where this idea sprang from. It's different but, again, I hope you liked it and thanks so much for reading. :)


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